Hey there, thought it might be a good time for a little check-in on things. Maybe not a full-blown 'state of the site" but also maybe actually exactly that. We’ll see where things end up.
It’s been a bit more than two years since I first set this up. There’s a possibility it’s been nearly two years since the site was actually published on the internet, but close enough to call it.
Over the last two years, I’ve done a lot of out-of-sight technical work to keep the site up and visible, but also to ensure that it is recoverable and portable. A lot of the credit for that goes to the teams at Discourse that made an all-around great software product, made it open source, and gave it away to the world for free. They do good work, and they make a lot of the administration about as easy as you could like.
Along with that technical work, I’ve also worked with folks on visual elements here. Look, I work in a technology role but I am categorically not a visual designer, not even if you look at it from really far away with your eyes squinted super-tight. I’m also not much of a visual artist. I’m very grateful to Jason for pitching in and helping me define some color schemes and set up the site’s original branding. I also quite appreciative of Paige for taking on the task of designing the site’s current branding - she did a great job with it and I’m quite pleased.
A little less than a year ago I undertook changing the site’s name. My reasons for that are as (publicly) articulated as they’re going to be. Overall I’m much happier with the new name and hope it pleases other people, too. The name- and branding-change would normally be a daunting task, but the Discourse software is shockingly adaptable and made the presentation changes easier (much easier) than the technical changes. Links and navigation to the old URL all re-write to here and the old email addresses are still up and kicking, too.
This next bit is a little harder for me, personally. After two years, we’re sitting at fewer than 50 users. Of those users, there are four who have created a topic, and fewer than 12 who have made a post or a reply. The last time a new user signed up was just over a year ago.
The user-count situation is on me: I haven’t really done much to promote the site in any way. I’ve been in a “maintenance mode” with things: regular patching, irregular posting, and otherwise being pretty quiet.
If this were a business, I’d either have pulled the plug on it or have to face an unwelcome reality about viability.
But this isn’t a business. Not only is this not a business, it’s an endeavor with extraordinarily low dollar-costs per year. I pay for the domain registration and three email addresses (x2, on account of the re-branding) but my hosting is piggy-backed off of an always-on device through a virtual machine, so it doesn’t even cost the electricity to keep it running.
Dollars aren’t the only costs, though, and they aren’t even a good way of quantifying anything that really matters. This site requires attention to ensure it’s still usable, hasn’t been hijacked, isn’t causing harm, and has something valuable to present to visitors. And there’s an emotional component to opening and refreshing the browser tab to check on all of those things and seeing the recent activity.
So… where is this going? Why keep it going? Why not just shut it down, call it quits? I mean, no one asked me to do this. Nobody suggested it, or even pointed at a problem and grunted in a meaningful way.
I started this site because I saw (and see) anti-social, corrosive, and unaccountable elements at work against communities and affinity groups - not only in the gaming space but definitely here, too. Two years later, I still see the same issues, the same threats, and roughly the same (lack of) progress toward “seizing the means of computation” in support of our self-determination and individual preferences.
Whatever.
I’m still here. We’re still here. And we will be, one way or another, until we just can’t anymore. I don’t see that day being any time soon, but the future is something we only know when we trip over it.
Back to that big question: what are we doing here?
What are we even doing here?
We’re connecting, being connected, but we’re doing something even more important: we’re keep a space of our own, for ourselves and our friends, so that it will be here and ready for the day we all walk away from the places, sites, and apps that draw us in and sell access to our friends back to us.